Monday, November 19, 2007

Henry Payne endeavors to describe the Great Global Warming Swindle in terms the average American can understand:

The Greens-Government-Media Complex – the new Iron Triangle – was on full display this weekend as the U.N. tried to muster a frightening dossier of intelligence to convince the international community to fight a pre-emptive war on global warming.

That's a pretty daring metaphor coming from a conservative, wholly apart from the calculated obnoxiousness of calling this last-ditch plea for mitigation "pre-emptive."

They're trying to frighten us, the story goes, and we mustn't give in...partly because it could distract us from more serious dangers (e.g., balsawood drones bearing anthrax spores), and partly because attempting, however modestly, to mitigate global warming would destroy the economy and plunge us into a Second Dark Age where cannibalism is seen as the PC alternative to eating animals, and antibiotics are rejected as "speciesist."

With these terrifying (but plausible!) scenarios in mind, let's take a closer look at how the conspiracy works. The UN craves untrammeled power, so it created the IPCC to describe global warming in frightening terms. The media want the UN to have untrammeled power, so they dutifully report on what the IPCC says:

New York Times’s green reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal (in dispatches that ran across the planet via the Times News Service) committed journalistic malpractice as she uncritically reported on the “forceful language” of the “most powerful” IPCC report warning of “mounting risks.”

See how the pieces fall into place? The NYT is so committed to propping up the UN and the Greens that it's using its wire service to disseminate this article worldwide, instead of targeting its green agitprop at the thousand or so irrelevant academic Marxists who still read the daily paper.

The Nobel Committee is in on it too, needless to say:

The triangle was further reinforced by the Nobel Peace Prize, “an honor,” wrote Rosenthal, “that many scientists here said emboldened them to stand more forcefully behind their positions.” Science? Sounds like raw politics.

I've heard it argued that some catastrophe will one day force people like Payne to change their tune. I disagree. I reckon they'll simply claim that the UN itself caused the disaster - with Iranian plasma weapons, perhaps - because it needed "a new Pearl Harbor" to ensure the triumph of Socialism.

5 comments:

It is a fact that Al Gore's peace prize is a political endorsement of his global warming schtick. Is it possible that you don't realize the science of climatology is politically charged? Where's the ad hominemism in noticing that these "world bodies" are in this racket for the influence and lucre?

The "progressive" belief in the absolute truth of global warming is certainly ideological and, frankly, religious.

Is it possible that you don't realize the science of climatology is politically charged?

Everything's politically charged. And if standing to benefit from arguing one's case renders one's position inherently suspect, then so much the worst for denialists.

But I'm not an epistemological nihilist or a vulgar relativist, so I don't see what any of this has to do with the observed variation of carbon isotopes or the niceties of borehole analysis.

Where's the ad hominemism in noticing that these "world bodies" are in this racket for the influence and lucre?

Circumstantial ad hominem:

1. The IPCC says global warming is true.2. But the IPCC benefits from claiming that global warming is true.3. Therefore global warming is false, or likely to be false.

Doesn't make much sense, whether you're using it to argue against climatology or evolution. But people like you, who can't argue on the science, are stuck with it. That tired old "GW is a religion" gag is typical of the pathetic straw-grasping to which denialism has been reduced, and of your own laziness and credulity when selecting other people's talking points.

The phrase "I can never understand what you're saying" is telling. I think that Toby pretty well typifies one in the grip of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). Arguing based on evidence is simply not in the RWA mold. For a stimulating introduction to viewing the political world through the lens of RWA, check out the interview that Electric Politics did with Bob Altemeyer, the psychologist who wrote the free downloadable book on RWA.

Kurt

P.S. RWA does not map directly to Republican, by the way. There are RWA's in Russia who defend Communist leadership.